


The Certain Knot of Peace

by blithers



Category: Enola Holmes (2020)
Genre: Dancing, F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Sharing a Bed, Undressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:02:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28144293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blithers/pseuds/blithers
Summary: “I have but a single bed, so you’ll have to sleep on the floor,” she says.
Relationships: Enola Holmes/Viscount "Tewky" Tewksbury
Comments: 48
Kudos: 321
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The Certain Knot of Peace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Corina (CorinaLannister)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorinaLannister/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Corina! I hope your first Yuletide is a good one.
> 
> Thank you to my beta readers, peevee and ianthebroome. Title from [this sonnet.](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45160/astrophil-and-stella-39-come-sleep-o-sleep-the-certain-knot-of-peace)

“I have but a single bed, so you’ll have to sleep on the floor,” she says.

Viscount Tewkesbury, the troublesome Marquess of Basilwether and Enola Holmes’s newly acquired charge, contemplates the strip of rough, stained boards laid out in front of the meager fire. “We shall need more blankets, then,” His Lordship says, and sits himself down on her bed to examine the newspapers stacked there.

* * *

Enola manages to procure additional blankets from the boarding house owner for a reasonable sum, as well as a spare pair of gentlemen’s trousers and shirt that she thinks will work well enough for Tewkesbury, and dumps them on the bed upon re-entering the room. The runaway Marquess is stretched out on the floor now, hands tucked behind his head.

“Comfortable?”

“Completely. It’s a charming view from down here.” He flashes a funny, conspiratorial grin up at her.

Going into hiding, it turns out, entails rather more of the practicalities of life than Enola had been expecting, given the dashing, adventurous implications. They negotiate—with some careful wording and the utmost discretion—the less savory aspects of a shared living situation, and agree that the window is the most expeditious route for Tewkesbury to go in and out, as a frequent male visitor in a women’s boarding house might raise otherwise awkward questions. They split what is left of Enola’s cold luncheon for supper and settle down to skim the evening’s newspapers and magazines for any message from Enola’s mother.

Enola’s two small candles seem inadequate against the darkness as night falls. She finds herself wishing for a coal-oil lamp, or even an extra candle or two. Tewkesbury whiles away the time by telling Enola more of his family’s history, and, in particular, much more of the circumstances of his father’s recent death. _Suspicious indeed_ , she thinks, and makes him run through the details a second time.

Eventually Tewkesbury stretches his arms up above his head and yawns, and Enola asks him to turn about and face the wall, per their agreement, while she does the necessary work of preparing for sleep.

She undoes the buttons down the front of her bodice, and slips the overskirt drapery and skirt off over her head. She glances back at Tewkesbury, who is stalwartly facing the opposite wall, his back unnaturally straight.

“You know you can’t go back to your job at Covent Garden after this,” she says, undoing the buttons of her camisole cover and shrugging out of the overshirt.

“You think not?”

Enola unties the knot of the drawstring that holds up the bustle attached to her rear, and hangs the entire ridiculous accordion-like structure on a nail in the wall. “If I can figure out that you would be there, so can your family. As well as that awful thug they hired.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised that even in hiding my family is taking away the one occupation I chose for myself.” The words have a faint flavor of bitterness that Enola well understands.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and steps out of her petticoat. She shakes it off, to dislodge the dust and dirt of the day.

“Well. I would rather stay alive than sell flowers, I suppose.”

She thinks of him, planning his escape in his treehouse, giving up a life of immense comfort for an unknown and often unkind world, and wonders if that is precisely true. She gives Tewkesbury the privacy of space, and says nothing.

Enola pulls out the money hidden inside her corset, tucking it away underneath the mattress, and goes to work unlacing herself. She struggles each time with the long ribbons of the corset, unused to the contortions and adjustments necessary for the device, given that she had never worn one until purchasing her new clothes two days prior. The whole frustrating, tedious process seems that much more unbearable when performed behind the Marquess of Tewkesbury’s back, like slapstick pantomime.

She thwacks her elbow into the wall, and muffles an exclamation as it hits. Tewkesbury starts to turn instinctively, then, recollecting himself, whips back around to face the wall again.

“Do you—”

“No!” She twists her arms, tugging to loosen the stays. “No, I’m quite fine on my own, thank you.”

He’s quiet for a long minute. “I know ladies’ clothing can be difficult,” he says after a bit, very carefully. “And you have no maid to help you.”

“Are you saying,” she asks, still wrestling with the blasted thing, “that you, Viscount Tewkesbury, the Marquess of Basilwether, future member of the House of Lords and exorbitantly titled English nincompoop, will act as my lady’s maid?”

The tips of his ears go fully pink. “I didn’t…”

“I thought not. Let me manage in peace, then.”

She finishes with the corset, picking off the small clasps down the front after the laces loosen enough, hanging it over the back of the chair for the night. She leans down to undo the strings of her boots and roll off her stockings, then glances at Tewkesbury one final time before stripping off her chemise and drawers, leaving her completely naked for one nerve-wracking, awful moment before she pulls on her thick, eminently practical cotton nightgown, which goes all the way down to her calves. Her heart beats fast.

“I’m done,” she says, gathering up her clothes to wash and hang up for the night.

When Tewkesbury turns to face her again his face is glowing a bright, ridiculous red, but Enola can’t find it in herself to make fun of him for it. She busies herself rinsing and hanging out her drawers and chemise on the drying rack as unobtrusively as possible, while Tewkesbury takes off his jacket and starts to undo the buttons of his vest. He is very obviously avoiding looking at her too closely in her nightgown.

“Do you mind as well?” he asks, hesitating at the top button.

Enola turns to put her gaze toward the same wall that had been Tewkesbury’s particular friend before and begins to unpick her hair.

It’s horrifically personal to listen to somebody else undress, it turns out. There’s the rustle of fabric and the soft thump of Tewkesbury’s bare feet on the floor, and Enola feels like sinking into the floor in embarrassment. She hadn’t thought much about this part of their arrangement when she’d suggested this—after all, they had camped together outdoors, sleeping together in front of a campfire with scarcely a second thought—but the closeness and quiet of her little room, the soft noise of the fire and the knowledge that Tewkesbury is undressing several feet from where she sits, combine to make the whole situation unbearably intimate.

“Done,” he says after a bit, and when Enola turns around he’s dressed in the secondhand clothes she’d bought off the boarding house. “It’s not sleeping attire, but it’s nice to get the chance to clean my other clothes, at least,” he says, in an embarrassed sort of way.

“Of course,” she agrees, trying for a practical, unaffected tone.

She brushes her hair out and pulls it back into a loose plait for the night while Tewkesbury washes up, and she holds herself stiffly under the covers until Tewkesbury lies down as well, then leans over to blow the candle out.

Enola finds it hard to sleep with the little noises Tewkesbury makes next to her, fussing and fidgeting about and obviously having difficulty getting comfortable on the hard floor. But his breathing evens out as the minutes slip by, slowing rhythmically into the patterns of sleep, while Enola continues to stare, wide-eyed and terribly awake, at the ceiling above.

Enola props herself up on an elbow after a bit, and looks down. The fire provides some dim light, enough to limn the outline of Tewkesbury’s relaxed and unguarded features beneath her, painting him with a thin, flickering glow.

His face is long and finely drawn, with sharp, overbred cheekbones and a peculiar upward tilt to his eyebrows, even in sleep, as though mildly yet constantly surprised by the world. She finds to her surprise she misses the cast of his eyes in sleep: the sharp, boyish glitter of them, which lend much to his natural, earnest intelligence. His eyelashes are thin but dark, laid across his cheeks. His mouth is gaping slightly open, breathing deeply.

Mother would indeed be displeased with her for taking up his cause.

The flame flickers low and gutters out to coals.

* * *

The room is empty when Enola awakens the next morning. Tewkesbury’s blankets are folded neatly at the side of her bed, and the window is ajar.

“Idiot!” she mutters, and angrily splashes water on her face. If Tewkesbury ignores her excellent advice and protection and puts himself in the hands of murderers, there isn’t much she can do about it, is there?

She makes the bed and dresses for the day in her widow’s weeds in a state of righteous indignation. Tightening her corset this morning hurts: her ribs ache from where she was kicked yesterday, and the scabs on her knees are still tender underneath her petticoats.

She is doing up the pearled buttons of her black bodice when there’s a knock at the window, and an unaccountably cheerful face and waving hand appear from behind the glass.

“Are you _trying_ to get yourself killed?” she snaps, sliding the window pane up.

He jumps to the floor of her room. “And a good morning to you, Enola Holmes. Worried about me?”

“Not a bit.”

“I picked up a few things. Don’t worry, I was careful.” Then, to her supremely unimpressed look, “I’m alive, am I not? Ready for another glorious and exciting day of hiding from the law.” To Enola’s faint horror, he really seems to mean it.

Tewkesbury, off Enola’s suspicion of his family, produces gentlemen’s evening clothes and a towering top hat, which he slicks his hair back underneath, and finishes the whole ensemble off with comically small pince-nez, perched like a small metal bird atop his nose.

“You look ridiculous,” she says matter-of-factly.

“That is the idea,” he drawls, exaggerating his already posh accent, rounding out his Eton vowels into farce. He doffs his hat to bow deeply to her. “I am to present myself to my family lawyers as a competing interest in Basilwether Hall, and I must play the part.”

“It _is_ a good idea. Any man who met you would only be able to say they encountered a toff in a stovepipe hat and spectacles.”

“Quite,” Tewkesbury agrees, grinning.

“How is it that you have never met your own lawyers, anyway?”

“They work for the estate and on behalf of the family. My father and uncle dealt with that business, up until my father’s death. And, as such, they have never met me.”

“Shockingly helpful for your current situation.”

He looks in terribly high spirits, as though they are boarding school conspirators in the same silly undercover game. “Speaking of which, you look delightfully dour yourself today.”

Enola secures her cap with several strategic sharp pins and pulls the black veil forward over her face, then affects a dramatic fainting posture, with the back of her hand pressed up against her forehead. “My dear husband, gone so soon. Woe is me!”

Tewkesbury adopts a mock-regretful expression. “You must miss him dreadfully.”

“The light of my life, now cold and dead.”

“What a pity.” Tewkesbury offers her his arm. “Shall we, my lady?”

* * *

As it turns out, they are both thwarted in their respective missions. Tewkesbury’s lawyers give him the hard runaround, and Enola finds nothing of use with her questions into the Marquess’s uncle’s doings in military and social life. They both slump back to Enola’s rented room in the late afternoon, depleted and discouraged and very hungry. Tewkesbury sheds his disguise of top hat and pince-nez, and rakes his fingers through his slicked-back hair, fluffing it up about him so that it more closely resembles a surprised woodland creature.

Enola sets aside the thick veil of her widow’s dress.

“I’ll get us food. You stay here,” she says.

“As you wish,” he agrees, and plops down on her bed to wait, stretching his lanky limbs out as she closes the door.

Enola makes a pot of tea in the kitchen, and cuts thick slices of bread off the loaf from the morning, and even manages to locate two toasting forks. She absconds with the whole setup back to her room, and she and Viscount Tewkesbury enjoy their feast picnic-style on the floor in front of her small fire, rotating the sliced bread about to toast it evenly, trying not to burn their fingers.

“I can’t think of the last time food tasted so good,” Tewkesbury says around a mouthful of crumbs.

Enola takes another sip of her tea and stretches out her legs to warm her boots in front of the fire, wriggling her toes in her shoes.

“Better than the fancy food they made you in that oversized mansion of yours?”

Tewkesbury licks crumbs off his fingers. “Miles better. The only thing that would improve this is some toasted cheese, but beggars, I suppose, cannot be choosers.”

“You can hardly say that you’re a beggar, Sir Lord Fancy-Title Viscount Marquess.”

“Too true. With toast like this, we live the life of kings.”

Rain starts to fall as the afternoon lengthens and darkens, a dreary London mist damping down the ever-present smells of human city habitation, and coldness seeps through the walls as the evening slides into night. They build up their little fire higher and commence the required reading of the day’s papers and periodicals.

Boredom sets in quickly. They cannot escape outside in the rain, and Enola’s small room seems increasingly oppressive as the evening wears on. Tewkesbury starts tapping his feet, and Enola wants to snap at him for the constant tap-tap-tap of it, only then he’s getting up and pacing around a bit, and she’s re-reading the same dismaying article about the latest awful fashions in dress improvers the third time through.

Tewkesbury stops in front of her, looking down, then says unexpectedly, still tapping his foot, “We should dance.”

“What?”

“Dance. Dance! Or do something. I feel as though I could crawl out of my skin. Come, do something with me, Enola Holmes.”

“I don’t dance,” Enola says shortly, and turns her attention back to her thrice-read women’s article.

“All the better. I’ll teach you. It’ll be a grand time.” He bows low over her, holding out a hand, the nauseatingly correct picture of a fine young lord. “Would you honor me with your hand, Miss Holmes?”

It annoys her greatly that he seems so at home with this social convention that she knows little of, so that he would make a jest of it. Her notion of dancing, which comes solely from books read in Ferndell’s library, is disturbingly romantic—she knows, academically, that dancing is a common activity and an expected form of socialization, and not nearly the thing she perhaps thinks it is, but her heart beats faster, and a disquieting anticipation shakes her nerves.

“I think not,” she says with asperity, and pushes his hand away from her.

“You are supposed to curtsy back to me and say something agreeable like _of course, my lord. Charmed, I’m sure_.”

“What nonsense. Perhaps more gentlemen would deserve the title if they heard the word _no_ more often.”

“You are probably right,” he laughs. “Still, refusing a gentleman when asked to dance is not the done thing.” Enola can hear an echo of his family’s voice in the sentiment—his grandmother’s words, or perhaps his mother’s, lecturing him on useless, lordly etiquette.

“How do you feel about table tennis?” she asks, stalling.

“As a substitute for dancing?”

“I _am_ quite proficient at table tennis.”

Tewkesbury makes a show of looking about their current residence. “We seem to be lacking basic equipment for the sport. And the room to maneuver.”

“But we have enough room to dance?”

“We can make do, I’m sure.”

She looks at his still-outstretched hand, suspicious and hating her own nerves.

“How will you ever become good at dancing if you do not learn?” he presses. “What if you need to attend a dance, in the course of your detective work?”

“Then I shall have much bigger problems to solve.”

“Still.”

“I’ll fake it.”

“You’ll fake it better with a bit of practice, I dare say.”

There is much she does not know how to explain to Tewkesbury at the moment: he knows a little of her unusual upbringing, but the gap of social understanding between them gulfs unaccountably large. She does not dance, but that simple fact covers a lifetime of solitary pursuits and a wild, half-feral childhood with only her mother for real companionship.

“Fine,” she says, begrudgingly, and puts her hand in his, letting him pull her to her feet.

He grins at her, bright and boyish. “Excellent.”

He teaches her a country dance, which involves far less physical contact than Enola had been dreading, and her nervousness fades as they rotate in little individual circles at some distance apart, clapping hands or stamping their feet and holding their arms up in various funny contortions. Tewkesbury hums a tune underneath his breath at times, to give her the beat and flavor of the music, and as they keep dancing Enola finds herself, shockingly, having a tremendous amount of fun. Enola lets herself purposefully misunderstand his instructions just to get a rise out of him, and Tewkesbury keeps laughing at his own amateur attempts to teach, and soon she can’t stop smiling, her breath coming faster.

“And now we both skip on a diagonal… no, no, not toward each other. The other direction, so you’ll be headed towards the bed… right, like that. So I circle around with the girl to your left—Miss Inspidbury, I believe her name was—and you with the gentleman to my right—”

“Lord Boringwood was to your right, Lord Dullington to your left.”

“—right, yes—circle thrice, and then we step back and end at our starting positions yet again. Next we rest for a measure, then move in towards each other, like so.”

They take two steps in toward each other, so that Tewkesbury is standing just in front of her, his eyes bright with exercise and laughter. His arms come up to her waist, his hands spanning the line of her hips—the first time he’s touched her like this. Enola freezes.

Tewkesbury doesn’t seem to notice. “You need to put your hands on my shoulders,” he says cheerfully, as though it is nothing to be holding her like this, even though the feel of his hands against her hips is making Enola’s heart climb up thickly into her throat.

He seems so dismayingly unaffected by her proximity that she forces herself to the same nonchalance, lifting her hands to rest at his shoulders.

“Now we do a sort of shuffle-skip together up the line, like so—” His hands at her waist tug her onward, and then do a sideways hop together across the room, skirting the bed and the chair beside the washbasin. “And back again,” and they hop-step their way back to their normal spots. “And now, turn—”

Tewkesbury pulls her hand across his torso to his far waist, and rotates her in a circle, once, twice, their shoulders touching as they turn at a close distance. Something flickers in his expression as he looks at her, his smile fading a bit, but before Enola can fully consider the shift in expression he lets her go, and they push back to their starting position, neat and separate once more.

“And the music ends, and we’re done.”

He bows to her, and Enola curtsies back, trying to do it as sarcastically as possible.

Tewkesbury grins, good-natured and cheerful, straightening up. “You’re a natural.”

“Naturally.”

“I never doubted it. I believe you can do anything you set your mind to, Enola Holmes.”

They dance another set—a quadrille this time, both of them laughing again as Tewkesbury narrates the steps of the other couples and Enola provides color commentary as to their imaginary dance companions’ many foibles and minor crimes. “Once more?” Tewkesbury asks when they finish, and Enola happily agrees to the proposition, without particular thought.

“Would you like to try something different this time?” he asks.

“What are you proposing?”

He hesitates, for some reason that Enola cannot discern. “A waltz,” he says, finally. “Have you heard of it?”

“No. What must we do?”

“To start, hold your arms like so.” He holds up his own, one at an angle forward and the other out to the side. She mimics him, assuming this is yet another silly pose like they’ve been doing at several feet of clear distance up until now.

But then he steps forward, into her space, and slips his bent arm under her own. He pulls her into a clinch, so that his hand rests just at her back. He reaches out to grab Enola’s hand with his own before she can react, and then, quickly, counts off, “And one, two, three, and one, two—” and starts to drag her about, with the pressure of his hand on her back.

Enola stumbles forward. His hand is dry and warm clasping her own. “What did you say this was?”

“A waltz,” he repeats, both of them tripping over each other’s feet. Pink is flushed across his pale complexion, and she thinks that he’s more nervous about the close contact of the dance than he wants to let on. “I just learned it myself. Three beats, three steps. _Dah_ dah dum, _dah_ dah dum, _dah_ dah dum.”

Enola drops her eyes to focus on Tewkesbury’s feet, and concentrates on the steps so as to give herself an excuse for not thinking about what is happening. She feels inexcusably flustered with him this close. She thinks that her early reticence about dancing was probably in the right after all.

Tewkesbury hums a bit, keeping the beat. She can feel his fingers against her back. They flex at times—nervously or unconsciously, she’s not sure.

“How did you learn to dance?” she asks.

“I have a dance master.” His blush only intensifies. “You are much more pleasant to dance with than him.”

She says nothing to this, but her heart beats faster. She distracts herself from the compliment with the novel thought that Tewkesbury did not arrive in the world knowing how to dance and other social skills from birth, or that the knowledge of such things did not osmose itself into his life along with the rarified air he breathes, but rather that some staid, skinny man in a suit who works for money taught him such things.

He gains confidence as they continue to dance, and he sweeps her about more firmly after a bit. They circle the bed with small steps, making full use of the limited floor space available to them. Enola finds it a strange exercise to be led in a dance: to be told where to go by the pressure and angle of another’s body working with her own.

“Do you attend dances often?” she asks. She has an unsettling vision of Tewkesbury paired off with the titled, wealthy daughters of high society at the various assemblies he might attend. She imagines a lineup of anonymous, beflowered girls, with un-scabbed knees and no bruises that spread like dull ink across their skin, all smiling prettily up at him. 

“Sometimes, to accompany my mother. I much prefer it when I am not required to attend, however.”

“You prefer to spend time out of doors,” Enola says, looking him over closely. “In your treehouse, and in nature.”

“You know me better than I know myself. Yes, I prefer to be out of the house as much as possible.”

“I miss Ferndell,” Enola lets herself say. “I miss the trees, and the fields there. I miss going outside with nothing but my sketchbook and a pencil or charcoal.”

Tewkesbury’s hand tightens around her own.

He leads them back to their starting position, and, releasing his hold, takes a step back from her. He bows low, as he has done after each of their dances, but there’s something rather more solemn about his expression and action this time. It lends him an unexpected shading of maturity, as though providing a brief glimpse into his future, a decade or so hence, of the sort of man he might one day be.

Then he straightens up, and smiles at her, and the moment passes.

 _Nonsense_ , Enola tells herself firmly. Utter nonsense, really.

Tewkesbury slips out to buy meat pies from a vendor down the street, and Enola makes tea and finds the last remnants of some sugar, and they eat before the fire again, sitting on the floor with their backs against the bed frame, in companionable, mutual silence. They undress and change clothing for the night, with the same rules as the previous evening. Tewkesbury makes no comment about helping her with her stays again; Enola lets him use the fresh water in the washbasin before her this time.

She catches him watching her as she brushes and plaits her hair for the night, sitting on the bed in her nightgown. There’s an expression on his face she cannot immediately place.

“Good night, Tewkesbury,” she says, and blows the candle out.

“Good night, Enola Holmes,” he says quietly.

The night falls dark around them, and Enola falls asleep first this time, dreaming of music.

* * *

They decide to stick together the next day, and walk down to the docks. The district reeks of the sea and the pervasive rubbish smell of the Thames, and is thick with the press of people and poverty in its many sad, mortifying forms. Enola is wearing her red day-dress and Tewkesbury his linen suit, and they walk close together, posing as brother and sister.

“Smells like fish,” Tewkesbury says, and wrinkles up his nose.

“A bold deduction. Are you sure you’re not a great detective yourself?”

“I should adopt the last name Holmes as well, you mean?”

“If you think you deserve it.”

He laughs. “Probably not. But it still smells of fish.”

They ask questions regarding the Tewkesbury family’s concerns at the large shipping companies that do their business in the port of London, and try to determine the identity of the thug hired by the Marquess’s unknown enemy. They have little luck until they turn a corner and run into the man himself, sporting a bowler hat, a sneer, and a wicked-looking cane.

“Damn,” Tewkesbury says, and Enola finds herself agreeing wholeheartedly with the sentiment, as they start to run.

* * *

They limp back to their shared hideout afterwards, after a narrow and not particularly elegant escape. It had been a spectacularly bad showing on both their parts: Tewkesbury because he had no practical experience in brawling and Enola because she had spent most of the time worried about Tewkesbury getting nabbed out from under her nose.

Her wrist is tender, with purple blooming slowly around the joint, and it aches to move about. Her side, where she took a hard kick impacting the whalebone of her corset against day-old bruises, is stiffening as well. Mud cakes her shoes and the bottom of her hem, and is streaked across her face. Tewkesbury is little better. There’s a gash high across the back of his shoulder which tore both the fabric and skin underneath, and he’s limping from a twist in his ankle. 

They determine that they must risk the front door of the boarding house together, for Tewkesbury does not think he can manage her first-floor window. They walk side by side with a staid dignity of purpose to Enola’s small room without attracting undue attention. Enola goes for clean water, and when she gets back Tewkesbury has finished unbuttoning his jacket and is wincing, trying to remove it with his injured shoulder.

“Here! Let me help you.” Enola sets the washing jug down and helps him remove the coat. The cut across his left shoulder seems worse than before, the bright red of blood contrasting against the white of his shirt.

She unfolds a small knife out of the pocket hidden in the seam of her overskirt, then retrieves her nightgown from underneath her pillow and goes to work cutting off strips of white fabric from the hemmed bottom, working as best she can with her injured wrist. Tewkesbury takes the knife from her after a moment, noticing her pain, and so Enola goes to set a kettle of water to boil instead.

“If you would unbutton your shirt and push it down a bit,” she says when she gets back, “I believe I can clean and bandage your wound.”

He undoes the buttons of his gentleman’s blouse and they pull his shirt off his wounded shoulder together. It leaves him half-naked, baring much of his upper torso. He hunches his shoulders forward; the part of his chest that is exposed is white and thin.

Tewkesbury shivers when her fingers brush the bare skin of his neck, and Enola feels a queer, unexpected tickle of power.

His already pale face goes whiter as she cleans the wound. The slice trails across his back, ending just past the line of his spine. She wraps the injury with boiled fabric, and straps down the bandage with a few longer strips. She cannot tie the knot at the end with her injured wrist, so Tewkesbury ties off the fabric himself.

He stands up to face her, his shirt still partially unbuttoned. “Thank you,” he says.

“We are brothers in arms,” Enola says, trying to be brisk about it. “It is to be expected.”

“Still.” He gestures toward her own injury. “May I?”

He examines her wrist, turning it carefully this way and that, and prodding it gently. Enola hisses when he hits a particularly sensitive spot. They work together to wrap the joint, encasing it in clean, tight bandages to help keep the movement to a minimum.

“I know herbs that can help with bruising,” he says, tying off the ends of the fabric with a neatly executed reef knot. “I don’t know how to find them near here, but perhaps a shop or a park. I shall see what I can find tomorrow.”

They wash up in exhausted, mutual silence after that. Enola cleans the mud from her face as well as she can with her good arm, using the small mirror in the room for guidance. 

Tewkesbury dutifully turns about to face the wall as she starts to struggle with her muddy clothing, and she manages the buttons on her outer bodice and skirt mostly one-handed before running into the obstacle that the long laces of her corset present. She attempts to twist her wrist about to deal with it, but the swollen joint and tight bandaging will not accommodate her action, and it throbs painfully at the attempt.

Well. _Well_. There’s nothing for it, really.

Enola makes herself say it.

“Tewkesbury?”

“Yes?”

She is unsure if Tewkesbury would even know the word _corset_. She wonders if young men are kept in as much ignorance as women are. She very much doubts it. “You offered to act as my lady’s maid, before,” she says, finally. “Could you help me with the—ah, laces? On my back?”

Tewkesbury clears his throat, then stands up, then sits back down, then up again, still facing the wall. “Oh. Right. Yes.”

There’s a pause, then the sound of soft footsteps behind her. Enola hates the silence and the scrutiny. She very much dislikes asking him for help. She hates the feeling of not being able to manage things by herself.

He fiddles a bit with the hanging ribbons.

“Do I pull them out?” he asks. “Or merely loosen them?”

“Loosen them.”

There’s another pause, and his fingers start to climb their way up her back.

Enola can scarce breathe. Tewkesbury isn’t talking. She can’t see his face; she cannot tell what he might be thinking, or if his face might be as red as her own.

He yanks a bit here and there as he loosens the pattern of lacing. Finally, after a near eternity, Tewkesbury gives a final tug and clears his throat. “Done. I think. Do you need help with the—”

“I believe I can manage, thank you,” Enola says firmly, her good hand clutching her corset halves together, which are threatening to split apart, leaving her cracked open like an awkwardly exposed egg.

“Well.” He clears his throat again. “Please do let me know if I can be of any further assistance.”

It’s laughably, painfully polite. “Of course.”

She finishes undressing in silence, with Tewkesbury back in his now-customary position, gallantly facing the wall. They switch spots when Enola is able to finally shrug herself into her nightgown, the hem tattered and higher after being torn up for bandages. She goes to work brushing her hair one-handed as Tewkesbury changes his own clothes behind her.

Tewkesbury lays out his thin blankets for the night on the side of her bed. Enola watches him, and pities the way the blood is already seeping through the bandages at his shoulder as he moves about.

“You should take the bed,” she says. “That cut is ghastly, Tewkesbury.”

“Where would you sleep?”

“I can take the floor, and you the bed for the night.”

“I could not,” Tewkesbury says, drawing dignity and well-bred manners about himself like armor. “I will not sleep on a bed while you sleep on the floor.”

“Rot,” she says, waving a hand. “Your shoulder is a fright. And don’t give me that look, you know I am right.”

“I know no such thing,” he says, snottily.

“Then we shall come up with another solution. We—” She casts about, trying to think. “We… we will share the bed,” she concludes, pleased at arriving at a sensible solution in the face of Tewkesbury’s useless and unhelpful chivalry.

She realizes the implication of what she has just suggested when Tewkesbury gapes at her, at a true loss for words, and a long, awkward silence ensues.

“We shall not!” he finally manages to splutter out.

“And why not?”

“You know why not, _Enola_.” He puts a funny little stress on her given name, staring at her quite directly, and she feels herself go hot and defensive.

“Don’t be such a ninny, Tewky! It is no different from you sleeping next to me when we shared the campfire the first night we met.”

“It _is_ different, and it is ridiculous of you to pretend otherwise.”

“We are living in each other’s pockets as it is! I am already ruined in the eyes of Miss Harrison’s Finishing School for Young Ladies if our current arrangement would come out, that we are sharing a room. Sleeping next to each other on a bed because you are sorely injured is little more.” She tries for a calmer, more reasonable tone. “I know it is not exactly proper, but that is no problem that I see. We shall be as principled as two fugitives from the law ever were. Besides which, nobody will ever know. It will be as though it never happened, after tonight.”

“There’s me. _I_ shall know.”

“And you won’t talk, will you, Lord Tewkesbury? And your shoulder really is quite a ghastly mess. You ought not to sleep on the floor while it is healing.”

“I will manage,” Tewkesbury says shortly, and throws his blanket and pillow onto the floor.

Enola throws up her hands. “Fine. Fine! See if I care, then.”

Tewkesbury lays himself down on the floor in a huff, and only because Enola is listening for it does she hear the pained catch in his throat, the stifled breath, as he attempts to make himself comfortable on the hard, unforgiving surface.

Ridiculous boy! Stars and garters, she doesn’t know why she tries.

She rolls herself facing away from him and crosses her arms over her chest.

There is a long, tense silence between them, broken only by the crackling of the coal in the fireplace. Dim shadows dance around them. Enola feels encompassed by thoughts of the argument they just had, her head stuffed full of them. She wants to argue with him some more, and feels that if she had one more crack at it, perhaps she’d win this time.

Tewkesbury sighs, loudly and obviously.

“What?” Enola says.

“I didn’t say anything.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Enola sits up in bed, frowning downward at the Marquess from her great, lofty height. “I shan’t give you a hard time if you just admit you’re wrong.”

“I’m not wrong. But—it is hard to explain.”

“What is hard to explain?”

He pauses, and Enola waves a hand about. “Spit it out.”

He hesitates still more, then speaks slowly, as though feeling out the words as he says them. “I never thought I would share a bed with a woman who wasn’t… well. My wife, I suppose. The woman I was married to, whoever she might be, at some point.”

It knocks the wind out of all her arguments in a way she wasn’t expecting.

“Oh,” Enola says.

“But I don’t...” Tewkesbury does not sound argumentative now, but rather just strange, in a way Enola does not fully understand. “It is hard to explain.”

Enola has never thought of marriage except as an institution to be studiously avoided. Her mother had made clear to her the vulnerable state that women who married put themselves in: the very real loss of economic and legal power, which all were ceded to a husband. It had always seemed incomprehensible to Enola why any woman might choose to put herself in such a precarious, powerless state.

And yet it occurs to her now: her mother had married. Her mother had shared a bed with a man, as Enola was proposing to do now. Her mother had borne a husband three children.

“So you will marry?” she asks Tewkesbury, already knowing the answer to the question.

“At some point. I’ve always been told I must, after all. Heirs and spares, and all that nonsense.” He brightens a bit, then adds, more cheerfully, “But perhaps not, if they never catch me. We shall have to stay on the run forever, Enola Holmes, and then I’ll have no such obligation.”

“Yes,” Enola says blindly, hardly knowing to what she is agreeing now.

He sighs again. “Right. You win, I suppose. Budge over—the floor is killing me.”

“You should have listened to me in the first place, and saved yourself the argument,” Enola says, and tries to sound sharp about it. She tries to sound as though this entire conversation had definitely gone the way she expected it to.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t give me a hard time?”

“Only a bit of a hard time,” she says, and presses herself up against the edge of the bed, making as much room as she can for him considering the skinny mattress and bed frame.

Tewkesbury lies down with his back to her, wrapped in his own, separate blanket. His back presses up against her own. Enola can feel it, every time he shifts about.

“Good night,” he says, after a bit.

Enola says nothing. It takes her a long time to fall asleep.

* * *

Enola wakes up, comfortable and hazy with the remnants of sleep, wedged back against something unfamiliar that radiates a comforting warmth, and her mind trips over the unfamiliar feeling as she realizes there is an arm wrapped tightly around her waist.

Tewkesbury, she remembers, in a sudden, wildly clear moment. Her heart starts going fast; she feels immediately wide awake.

He had turned towards her in the night: their feet are tangled up together, his legs pressed up against the back of her own. The heat of him is comforting, like the steady red glow of a fire gone to coals at night. Enola’s cotton nightgown has ridden up to her knees, and her calves are bare beneath the blankets. Enola can feel all the shifts of Tewkesbury’s body, pressed up against her as he is. His nose is tucked into the back of her neck.

The slow rhythm of his breath against her skin lulls at something wound up tight inside of Enola that she hadn’t even realized was there.

Her father had died when she was very young, and that Enola’s mother had probably loved her father had seemed a reasonable enough assumption. Enola had always supposed it to be so, in the blind way that children assume certain things of their parents. But she thinks now of the simmering, subversive anger of her mother, the antipathy she carried toward the role prescribed to her by society, and, for the first time, Enola wonders.

 _You’ll do very well on your own, Enola_ , her mother’s voice says firmly in her head, no-nonsense and disapproving. Enola can sense her mother’s disapprobation as clearly as if she were in the room: her hands on her hips, her lips pinched together in that particular way she had, her gaze sharp and too-knowing.

Tewkesbury’s breath on Enola’s neck stirs her hair, and, for the first time since her mother disappeared, Enola Holmes feels quite like crying.

Tewkesbury’s fingers twitch against her stomach, and Enola stops breathing. She lets herself stay just where she is, perfectly still.

She feels tension flood Tewkesbury’s body as he wakes up enough to register their closeness. He stiffens, then rolls away from her, leaving Enola’s back slowly cooling. The mattress shifts and shakes as he stands up to leave. He coughs and mutters something under his breath as he moves about the room. And Enola continues to pretend to sleep as Viscount Tewkesbury dresses for the day in their shared room. She keeps her eyes closed and feels like an utter coward.

He exits via the window, presumably to go get them breakfast, and Enola lets herself open her eyes.

She dresses herself for the day. She cleans her face and her teeth. She moves about automatically.

She paces nervously about the room afterwards, trying to consider the case before them, and what they must do next. Enola must find her mother; Tewkesbury must navigate the murderous intentions of his family and try to not die. It all seems a plain enough proposition when put forth like that, but Enola cannot stop the sinking feeling that everything is much more complicated now.

There’s a knock at the window, and Tewkesbury pops his head back into the room.

“Good morning, Enola Hol—” he starts to say, when the door to the room slams open. Inspector Lestrade bursts in, and the landlady of Enola’s boarding home says, “Didn’t I say it was them? Where’s my reward?”

Enola’s jaw drops at the unexpected betrayal. The nerve! And she’d paid in advance for the room and everything.

“Run!” she yells at Tewkesbury, and turns to slam the door shut again to buy him more time.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story and would like to share it, please consider reblogging [this post](https://blithers.tumblr.com/post/639144346265976832/the-certain-knot-of-peace-blithers-enola) on tumblr!


End file.
